This afternoon saw the first Hackney Pride march through the streets of East London.
Leaving Hackney Town Hall at 2.30ish, the 2 mile long route down Mare Street and along Hackney Road, the parade was to highlight homophobic and transphobic crime and to protest the commercialism of other pride events. We passed friendly faces at The Joiners Arms and The George & Dragon, and some not quite so friendly faces in some of the local corner shops and bus stops.
My rough estimate is ‘a few hundred’ people turned up – one organiser thought there was around 1000, I’d say there was at least 500 and quite possibly many more.
After the walk, we congregated in Spitalfields Church where we listened to activists from HOPE not Hate, LGBT History Month, Movement for Justice, the trade unions and local LGBT people. I sneaked out just before some bands came on but it sounded like it was going to be quite an eclectic afternoon.
It is hoped that this is the first march of an annual event. I’m a big fan of the mainstream celebratory events at are the mainstream Prides, but accept it is important to carry on campaigning not just for tolerance, but full acceptance for all LGBT people.
We took a few pics, not the greatest quality, find them in our Hackney Pride 2010 set on Flickr.
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